“He was taking a lot of risk then,” Neuville said of Katsuta’s SS10 run. “It’s very, very dirty. I had not really that info about so much dirt in the stage. Lots of surprises in there but I kept it clean and calm.”
Judging grip was the running theme of the morning, with several drivers complaining on stage nine that there’d been more pollution on the road than anticipated.
But it wasn’t a universal experience: WRC2 leader Yohan Rossel was surprised he’d been able to push.
“I didn’t expect so much grip to be honest,” he said, defying expectations. His lead in WRC2 over Lancia team-mate Nikolay Gryazin has increased to 28.1s.
Katsuta’s gap to overall rally leader Sami Pajari has narrowed to 13.5s after the first two stages of the Saturday morning loop, though his advantage over Neuville is a slim 1.2s.